iPhone Event: Developers, start your engines

Enterprise support notwithstanding, the big news for today’s iPhone event was undisputedly the software development roadmap, including the SDK. Jobs spent the bulk of the presentation discussing what the SDK would offer.

The APIs that developers will get access to are the same ones that Apple uses to build its own applications. The layers are much the same as you see in Mac OS X, unsurprisingly: Core OS, Core Services, Media, and Cocoa. To accommodate the iPhone’s unique user interface, they also built a new layer, Cocoa Touch. Core OS will offer even more robust power management than the OS X version, and Core Services will provide an SQLite database layer. A Core Location layer will give access to positioning data via cell phone towers and Wi-Fi.

OS X developers will be able to take advantage of all the tools they know and love for making iPhone apps. Xcode is fully iPhone-aware, as are Interface Builder and Instruments. An iPhone Simulator runs on your Mac and simulates the entire API of the iPhone’s version of OS X, so you can test and run your app on your computer before loading it up.

Jobs showed off a couple of sample apps: one that Apple built in two days, called Touch FX, which allows you to perform simple, Photo Booth-style image manipulations on the phone, and another that took a couple weeks, called Touch Fighter. Both take advantage of many of the phone specific features, like the accelerometer and multi-touch gestures.

Category: News, Software

Posted by Dan Moren on Mar 6 2008, 1:57 PM ET

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